"I'm prepared to have my baby die"

This is not the first time I have seen homebirth advocates nonchalantly talk about being prepared and thinking about their babies potential death when planning their ultimate birth. 

Let me say that you can NEVER, EVER, concoct a scenario in your head that comes close to the reality of actually losing your baby. Even parents who carry a baby they know will not survive don't know what it would be like nor are they prepared for losing their child. You can think life and death are beautifully interwoven, but there is nothing beautiful about death that happens before life. 

Try out this exercise here. Grab a few friends and a knife set. Ask one to plunge the biggest one into your heart. Ask another to plunge one into your back, probably a bread knife because those are long enough to puncture a lung. have another friend grab two more knives and drive them into your feet so you cannot move. Ask someone to give you some kind of psychedelic drug so reality is incredibly altered. Have them punch you in the eyes until your eyes are red and swollen and you look about double your age. This is nowhere close but it allows you feel some of the physical symptoms that losing your child causes. 

How about just sit online and look at infant funeral photos. Look at photos of stillborn babies. Watch videos of funerals for infants. Watch memorial videos. Write up an obituary for one of your living kids and place their photo next to it. Still doesn't come close! Reach out to grieving parents and watch them in their grief. Help plan a baby's funeral. Attend an infant funeral and watch the parents. Watch how they tenderly touch their baby. Then watch as they have to say goodbye forever. Yeah, you still have no idea. 

There is nothing I can say that can remotely give you any inkling into what it is like to lose your baby. If you think for one second that you can imagine what it is like, you are an idiot who is dead wrong. The day you go through it is the day you know what it's like. So, plan your birth, but don't say some stupid thing about preparing to lose your baby or imagining what it would be like or anything like that. Please. And let's not wax on poetically about life or birth being part of death. Death doesn't go hand in hand with birth like it does in homebirth circles. Death isn't beautiful or something good that happens to a baby.  There are no positive ways to see the death of a baby. It's a horrible thing to experience, the worst that could ever happen to a person. 

Course, you could surprise everyone and be one of the homebirth loss parents who don't care about their child. They normally bury their baby and forget about it. Parents who really love their children don't behave that way! 

"I'm prepared to have my baby die"

This is not the first time I have seen homebirth advocates nonchalantly talk about being prepared and thinking about their babies potential death when planning their ultimate birth. 

Let me say that you can NEVER, EVER, concoct a scenario in your head that comes close to the reality of actually losing your baby. Even parents who carry a baby they know will not survive don't know what it would be like nor are they prepared for losing their child. You can think life and death are beautifully interwoven, but there is nothing beautiful about death that happens before life. 

Try out this exercise here. Grab a few friends and a knife set. Ask one to plunge the biggest one into your heart. Ask another to plunge one into your back, probably a bread knife because those are long enough to puncture a lung. have another friend grab two more knives and drive them into your feet so you cannot move. Ask someone to give you some kind of psychedelic drug so reality is incredibly altered. Have them punch you in the eyes until your eyes are red and swollen and you look about double your age. This is nowhere close but it allows you feel some of the physical symptoms that losing your child causes. 

How about just sit online and look at infant funeral photos. Look at photos of stillborn babies. Watch videos of funerals for infants. Watch memorial videos. Write up an obituary for one of your living kids and place their photo next to it. Still doesn't come close! Reach out to grieving parents and watch them in their grief. Help plan a baby's funeral. Attend an infant funeral and watch the parents. Watch how they tenderly touch their baby. Then watch as they have to say goodbye forever. Yeah, you still have no idea. 

There is nothing I can say that can remotely give you any inkling into what it is like to lose your baby. If you think for one second that you can imagine what it is like, you are an idiot who is dead wrong. The day you go through it is the day you know what it's like. So, plan your birth, but don't say some stupid thing about preparing to lose your baby or imagining what it would be like or anything like that. Please. And let's not wax on poetically about life or birth being part of death. Death doesn't go hand in hand with birth like it does in homebirth circles. Death isn't beautiful or something good that happens to a baby.  There are no positive ways to see the death of a baby. It's a horrible thing to experience, the worst that could ever happen to a person. 

Course, you could surprise everyone and be one of the homebirth loss parents who don't care about their child. They normally bury their baby and forget about it. Parents who really love their children don't behave that way! 

Breastfeeding- It really isn't all that.

This is going to probably be a pretty controversial subject, just a warning.

Recently Babble had a photo contest of babies with their lovies. Of course, one mother had to do a nursing photo, which, won. Not surprising. I'm going to ask: Is it really necessary to show off nursing photos?? I have them myself and find them beautiful. However, I keep them to myself and refuse to put them on social networking sites. I feel that it's almost a "look at me" thing. We all know facebook has banned breastfeeding phots and will delete them. Do women who post them really think we all want to see them? Is it a way of saying "I'm breastfeeding so I'm above following rules"?? What is it exactly that makes you think everyone wants to see your boobs? If I even see a teen girl I know posting pictures in a bikini top, I say something. Some things are just not appropriate. I even judge women who have their asses hanging out of their shorts!

This leads me to another subject. There is a link floating around for a Natural News article about a couple out of Pasadena, CA. There is a history of abuse, parents who do home circumcisions, and are beligerant with any government officials. What does this family have to do with breastfeeding?? Well, the mother was nursing the youngest two children. Attachment parenting parents have taken on this cause because the government must have it out for these parents over their parenting practices. Lactivists are angry because OMG, these kids aren't getting breastmilk. When one blogger, Guggie Daly, stood up and asked people to look at the whole picture, she was attacked to the point that she took down her stuff. At first, I thought it was a publicity stunt, but I get that she felt she had no other choice and support that. I mean, how dare she say anything against what the majority of lactivists/APers say/think. Breastmilk or not, AP or not, some children are NOT better off with their parents. What is better? Loving parents who give formula or abusive parents that give breastmilk?? And, contrary to people's opinions, a child isn't entitled to breastmilk and they really don't need it.